Sam Daly Vision Sausalito

An open letter

Dear Sausalito,
let’s be more like Cassis
and less like Galveston.

Cassis puts cafés on the quay. Galveston puts parking between people and the water. Downtown Sausalito still has a choice.

Aerial of a Mediterranean harbor: boats packed in a marina, a tight quay, and a continuous row of shops and houses
More like this Cassis, France. The harbor is the living room. Buildings meet the water. You walk.
Aerial of downtown Sausalito: ferry pier, lawn, surface parking, and a thin waterfront
Sausalito today The ferry arrives at a lawn, a pier, and asphalt. The best land downtown is still a parking lot.

We already have the hillside, the boats, and the Bay. What we do not have is a town that treats the waterfront as a place to linger. Too much of downtown is organized for cars that stay a few hours, then leave.

Galveston is the warning: a wide road, a seawall, and parking where a promenade should be. Cassis is the other path: a tight harbor, narrow streets, and a front row of shops, restaurants, and doors.

This is a vision, not an adopted plan. The pieces are already on the map.

A narrow Cassis street: shops, café tables, people walking, one parked car
Cassis A street you share. Shops, a café table, people in the middle of the block.
A nearly empty Sausalito waterfront parking lot with a few cars under trees
Sausalito today A downtown lot. The water is somewhere past the asphalt.
A wide Galveston highway with a gas station, palmettos, and almost no one walking
Galveston A road, a gas station, and the water somewhere past the right-of-way.

The vision

Five things downtown could do.

01

Turn the parking lots into a town

Sausalito’s paid lots sit on the best land in town — next to the ferry, along the Bay, across from Bridgeway. Lot 3 is a long bay-edge lot. Lots 1 and 2 greet everyone who steps off the boat. Those plates of asphalt could be cafés, restaurants, and shops with doors on a public walk. Park the cars one block inland, or under the new buildings. Do not keep giving the waterfront to windshields.

02

Narrow Humboldt, Tracy, Anchor, and Bay. Let El Portal be a street.

Humboldt, Tracy, Anchor, and Bay are downtown streets dressed as access roads for lots. Narrow the lanes. Widen the sidewalks. Slow the cars. Make walking to the water ordinary, not a dash across a driveway. Delivery and emergency access stay; the extra pavement does not have to.

El Portal already runs from Viña del Mar Plaza toward the harbor — the one street that could be Cassis. Take it down to a crawl, or take the through-traffic off. Let the shops spill out. Café tables, shade, people in the middle of the block. It is already almost a town street. Let it finish the job.

03

Build a harbor promenade

One continuous walk from the ferry, past the yacht harbor, along the water, with shade, seats, and a reason to stay after the last boat. Not a leftover strip between parking and riprap. A quay. The kind of edge Cassis takes for granted.

04

Make the two parks matter

Viña del Mar Plaza is the little triangle at Bridgeway and El Portal — fountain, lawn, and the two elephants from the 1915 fair. It is a median that could be a square: more shade, more seats, less leftover grass next to traffic. El Portal should open the plaza toward the water, not dump you into a lot.

Gabrielson Park sits at Humboldt and Anchor, beside the ferry. It already has the view of Angel Island and the city. It is also the lawn people walk through on the way to a parking lot. Give it a real edge on the water, a better stage, and a reason to stay after Jazz and Blues by the Bay.

05

Run more ferries

The Golden Gate ferry already lands in the middle of downtown. That is the rarest asset a small waterfront town can have. More boats, later boats, easier bikes, and a landing that opens onto a promenade instead of a lot. If downtown is a place, the ferry is how most visitors should arrive.

The choice is still open.

Sausalito can keep the lots, the wide curb cuts, and the thin parks — a pretty Galveston with better hills. Or it can spend the next decade making downtown a harbor town again: shops on the quay, Humboldt and Bay slowed down, El Portal as a real street, two parks worth sitting in, and a ferry that feels like the front door.

— Sam